Black Leviathan

This was exactly to my tastes. It's described on the back of the book as Moby Dick, but instead of whalers, it's about drachenjagers (dragon hunters) traversing the Cloudmere in their magic crystal-levitated ships. Much like whaling, dragon hunting is dangerous business. And much like Moby Dick, here a jager captain's crew was struck with tragedy when a monstrous dragon of myth known as Gargantuan, aka the Black Leviathan, attacks his crew and kills nearly everyone on board. The bulk of the story takes place five years later and follows Lian, a young man studying crystal carving, who suddenly finds himself in a bind and has to flee his home.

This book is exactly what I love about dragons. Powerful, mysterious monsters that aren't fully understood. They're dangerous, they need to be taken seriously, they're not talking ridable pets. (Unless you have the mettle and sheer force of will to tame one. But they're still beasts.) They're not friends, they're not magically bound to humans and telepathic with them. They can be tamed, but it's more akin to taming a tiger.

The pacing is good, there's very little downtime and time wasting fluff. Lots of fun dragon fights and other exciting things happen. Entertaining the whole way through. I haven't read Moby Dick so I don't actually know just how close it is in terms of story beats to that, but as its own story, it's very good. A perfect book for me.